


illicit affairs

by bright_ly



Category: Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Inspired by Music, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:13:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29633067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bright_ly/pseuds/bright_ly
Summary: 5 times Jack and Katherine met illicitly, and 1 time they didn't.Inspired by Taylor Swift'sillicit affairs.
Relationships: Jack Kelly/Katherine Plumber Pulitzer
Comments: 7
Kudos: 7





	illicit affairs

**Author's Note:**

> this is just a random idea i had recently, loosely inspired by illicit affairs
> 
> hope you enjoy :)

**1**

It’s a Tuesday evening in February, and Katherine Plumber is on the floor. Jack Kelly is hovering over her.

She’d been, entirely innocently, sitting on her bed, swaddled in blankets, wishing someone - a specific someone, not that she’d ever admit it - was sitting there with her. Because she was cold, because it was February.  
No other reason.

It’s as she was mulling on these thoughts that her door had been knocked on, three times in rapid succession, by a rather aggressive hand. Vaguely wondering if she should be terrified for her life, but mostly worried for the welfare of her door, Katherine had emerged from her blanket prison, sighing. Despite the loss of warmth, she’d proceeded onwards, opening the door to reveal a very flustered Jack Kelly, who had immediately fallen into her, slamming the door behind him.

And that’s how she now finds herself on the floor in the hallway of her apartment, with Jack Kelly - who she most definitely does not have a crush on (“We’re not in second grade, God’s sake, Sarah!”) - hovering above her.

It’s a combination of these thoughts, rushing through her mind in approximately 0.2 seconds, that makes Katherine think _fuck it!_ and grab Jack’s collar, pulling his head down to her level, before pressing her lips against his.

He kisses her back for a couple of seconds, which is longer than she thought he would, really, before pulling back and regarding her with an amused expression.

“Thought’ya hated me, huh, Kathy?”  
“Doesn’t mean I can’t think you’re hot.”

He draws back further at that, amusement fading into understanding as he observes her tinted cheeks and parted lips. He blinks with a sudden realisation that in that moment, she could ask him for anything in the world and he would find it for her. Before he can say that or anything else, though, she asks him for one thing he can give her - an answer. “What do your friends think you’re doing, anyway?”

“Goin’ for a run.”  
Her lips quirk up. “You’ll be flushed when you return.”

And then they’re kissing again, and there’s not a lot of talking after that.

**2**

The second time, Katherine seeks him out. They’re at one of her father’s parties - God knows how she convinced him to invite her friends - and he’s been giving her longing stares all evening, despite Darcy on her arm. It’s like a game, avoiding his pleading eyes, but she finds she doesn’t mind when she loses and they maintain eye contact for a little too long to be appropriate (especially when there’s an almost-boyfriend _right there_ ).

Inevitably, she grows tired of the game, telling Darcy she’s going to step outside for a break, and shooting Jack a look that she hopes is laced with daggers but is in reality probably much too revealing of her true feelings - but she’s drunk, and so is everyone else, so she knows no-one except him will notice or care.

She watches from behind the too-majestic doors as he excuses himself from whatever conversation he’s having and makes his way to her, eyes down, heart pounding.

“Missed me?” He mutters in her ear, slipping an arm around her waist as she leads them to a room where she _knows_ they won’t be bothered. She’s spent many a day there hiding from the unwanted responsibilities she seems to have as an heiress. 

It’s a beautiful room, too, with ornate panes decorating the windows, and brightly coloured paintings covering every inch of wall. The ceiling, glimmering where the light hits perfectly-placed chandeliers, appears to be made solely from crystals, and Katherine knows the artist in Jack is dying to take a closer look - if they were there under any other circumstances, she knows he would.

“So, baby, are we gonna kiss? Or did’ya just pull me out’a that party to see this pretty room?”  
She whips her head around to face him, with an accuracy shocking for her inebriated state.  
“Don’t call me baby.” 

He just smiles at her, glancing towards the closed door, and for a moment she thinks he might leave, but then he leans down and- _oh_.

It’s like a drug, kissing Jack. She hasn’t done it all that much, but she can tell how addictive he is. His lips taste of alcohol and smoke, and combinations of drinks she knows he would never try. They’re chapped and rough against her own soft, stained lips, and they’re nothing like she’s used to. This time, neither of them feel the same desperation they felt that first time in her hallway, and she can take a moment to notice these things. It’s slow, and it’s nice, but there’s only so much time they have before one of them will be missed, and she breaks their lips apart to tell him so.

He nods, and his hands wrestle past the many layers of her dress with a renewed urgency. 

She doesn’t remember the second time, because she was drunk as hell, but she remembers that it was sloppy and thrilling, and that the room was almost as gorgeous as him.

**3**

Meeting in a hotel is perhaps not the most original of ideas, but they never claimed to be particularly unique or exciting. She needs to hide from her parents and Darcy; he needs to hide from everyone he’s ever met.

Hotels seem like the only option, at this point.

He’s waiting for her when she arrives, right on time, and she hates it. She hates the way they planned exactly where and when they would meet. She hates the lies she told Darcy about where she’s headed tonight. She hates the secrecy, but occasional clandestine meetings with the man she’s fallen in love with are better than nothing at all, so she holds on. God, she holds on tighter than she’s ever held onto anything.

This is their first arranged meeting. The first time they’ve both lied their way to each other; the first time they’ve both gone to each other knowing exactly what they want. It’s terrifying, but also liberating in a way she never would’ve expected.

It’s quick, the third time, and she leaves barely an hour after she arrives.

Lying in her own soft, familiar bed that night, she reflects. She wonders if he’d been expecting her to stay the night in that hotel room with him. She wonders, briefly, if she should have done that, and if she would have enjoyed it if she had. 

She dismisses the thought, because they’re not in a relationship. Yes, he makes her see colours she can’t see with anyone else, what of it? That’s just called good sex - they’re not in a relationship.

They’re having an affair. An illicit affair.

**4**

_‘Joseph Pulitzer dies’  
‘Katherine Pulitzer: the World’s teenage owner’  
‘Why Pulitzer left his daughter the NYW’_

The headlines bolt through her mind at lightning speed.

_‘Pulitzer’s death leaves daughter, 19, owner of the New York World’_

Her father, dead. Her, apparently, the owner of the World, courtesy of his will.

She’d never known he even had a will.

She’s in a restaurant, with Sarah, but the rest of the world is a million miles away. She’d turned her phone on, to check her texts, when she’d learnt, via a notification, that her father had died, leaving her, without her knowledge, an entire fucking _newspaper_ to run.

And she’d learnt this through Apple News. Because _of fucking course_ she had.

The next thing Katherine registers is being pulled into a dark alleyway by Jack Kelly, but she imagines something else must have happened between that and the restaurant. She imagines she apologised to Sarah as she left, and hopefully gave her some money for the food, before bolting down the street.

No wonder Jack was able to grab her so easily: she’s a certified mess.  
At least it’s him, not a murderer (she’s never had him pegged as one, anyway, and she likes to think she’s a good judge of character).

“Hey, it’s alright.”  
She wouldn’t have pegged him as the comforting type, either, but here they are.

“You’ll be okay, Kath. You’ve got, like, an entire city of employees to help you out.” He chuckles, and something in Katherine snaps. Apparently, her vulnerability does not like being this visible to someone so unknown.

“What’s it to you?” Having dodged out of his arms, Katherine straightens up, just tall enough to look Jack in the eye.

“What?”

“You heard me.” She makes to step further away, but his sudden grip on her shoulders, strong, and dominating in a way that isn’t as terrifying as she’d have assumed such a grip would be, prevents her from doing so. 

And then they’re kissing, and it’s nothing like their usual (needy, sensual, constantly competitive). It’s careful and kind, and reassuring. It steadies her, and for a brief moment, she feels complete tranquillity wash over her.

And then he’s gone, and she’s left with the ghost of a kiss on her lips and the revelation that she doesn’t know if that entire encounter was simply a product of her imagination.

**5**

It takes a month for her to reach out again, because her father just died and she has a newspaper to run.

When she does, though, he suggests _that_ parking lot - the one nobody ever uses - and she knows exactly where he means, and readily agrees, because it’s private enough to be alone but public enough to prevent any suspicions.

She walks (she was never allowed to get her driving license), but he pulls up in a battered car from a decade ago that she knows doesn’t belong to him. She doesn’t question it, though, because she _has_ missed him, despite what she might tell herself.

The moment he steps out of the car his lips are on hers, and she savours it, enjoying the bitter taste of the coffee he drinks for what she knows is the final time.

And then she pulls away, because she has things to say and he is going to listen.  
She tells him so, and he simply gestures for her to go on.

She knows what she wants to say. She’s only spent countless nights awake _deciding_ what that would be. She wants to tell him how much of a mess he unravels her into; she needs him to understand that he makes her idiotic, and foolish, and she can’t afford to be those things now that she is who her father was.  
She stammers through it, scared and guilty and angry all at once. He argues with her, at first, but though Jack Kelly is many things, he is not stupid, and he knows she means it when she says “this is the last time”. 

He kisses her again before she goes, so quick she’s not sure it even counts as a kiss, and then he clambers back into the definitely-not-his car and drives away. She thinks he sees him glance into his rear-view mirror for a final glimpse of her, but who is she kidding. He doesn’t care.

**+1**

He does care. He cares, when he cries himself to sleep that night, and he cares when he wakes up every morning without hearing from her, and six months later, when he reads Katherine’s mother has followed in her husband's footsteps, he cares.

She wants, so, so desperately, for him to pull her into that alley again. She craves that moment of peace she remembers so vividly from the day of her father’s death. She needs him, and it is physically painful to stop herself from picking up her phone and calling the one number she knows she should delete.

He hasn’t deleted her number, either. Just in case.

Six months ago, she would’ve run to him. She would’ve let herself fall apart in his arms, and then she would’ve handed him the glue with which he could stick her back together again. Now, though, her cracks, barely visible even to those who know her inside out, remain cracks. Katherine knows that one day she will collapse and she will have no-one there to catch her, but today is not that day. She is whole and beautiful, and stronger than she ever was in his arms.  
She doesn’t run to him. She curls up in her bed and cries, but no-one knocks on her apartment door. She isn’t pulled into any alleys, and at the next party she hosts, she doesn’t run away and kiss him in beautiful rooms. She walks with Darcy on her arm, still, and holds herself together because she’s lost the one man who could put her back that way if she fell apart.

She proves to herself that she doesn’t need Jack Kelly in her life to make it worth living, and maybe she’s lying to herself, but in the end, what does it matter?

She certainly doesn’t care, and she knows he doesn’t either.

**Author's Note:**

> so there's that
> 
> 2159 words according to google docs
> 
> find me on tumblr @chaoticallybright :)


End file.
